Tracy Kidder (MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS) has a gift for crafting exhilarating narrative nonfiction, and he has found perhaps his most inspirational subject in Burundian refugee Deogratias, who barely escaped Africa with his life, but eventually returned there to build a hospital after a remarkable rise from poverty and homelessness in the United States. When the Rwandan genocide of the mid-1990s spilled across the border into Burundi, Deo and other Tutsis were suddenly being hunted by murderous...

Tracy Kidder (MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS) has a gift for crafting exhilarating narrative nonfiction, and he has found perhaps his most inspirational subject in Burundian refugee Deogratias, who barely escaped Africa with his life, but eventually returned there to build a hospital after a remarkable rise from poverty and homelessness in the United States. When the Rwandan genocide of the mid-1990s spilled across the border into Burundi, Deo and other Tutsis were suddenly being hunted by murderous Hutus, causing him to flee back into Rwanda. As Deo reveals to Kidder, he was faced with almost certain death on numerous occasions, but was miraculously able to escape the slaughter and fly to New York, though he did not speak English and did not know a single soul who could help get him started. He found some semblance of refuge with a homeless community in Central Park, and began delivering groceries and doing other odd jobs, while spending his free time at the library reading dictionaries to learn the language.